The disclosure relates to ski boots, in particular the ski boots for skiing.
Skiing is a popular sport in winter. The feet of the skier must be securely and rigidly fixed onto the skis by ski boots. When the feet move back and forth or left and right, they must be rigidly connected to the skis by the ski boots in order to effectively control the gesture, speed and direction so as to slide on the snowfield. In order to put on the skis, the soles of the ski boots are snapped onto the bindings of the skis. Additionally, in order to make the boots securely snap onto the skis, the boots should be able to support the body weight of the skier in all the four directions of front, rear, left and right. Therefore, the sole and upper of the boots are typically an integral part and relatively stiff. However, when the skier is walking before arriving at ski track or when he wants to go to washroom, drink, or eat, the rigid boots cause inconvenience to him, in particular, he has to suffer this inconvenience and waddles to the entrance of the ski track from the place he puts on the boots or returns to the changing room from the ski track. It is very difficult to temporarily leave the ski track during skiing.
In order to solve this inconvenience, DAHU SPORTS provides a ski boot, which comprises a liner and a shell. The shell constitutes the outside of the ski boot and comprises a sole and an upper. The sole is snapped to a ski. The upper is comprised of a forward portion and a rearward portion which can be pivotally connected so as to separate from each other so that the liner can be taken off or put into the shell. Therefore, when the skier wants to walk, he can open the forward and rearward portions of the shell and walk by the liners, thereby avoiding the above inconvenience. When skiing, the liner is put into the shell and the forward and rearward portions are fastened to each other by a locking clasp so as to make up a ski boot as rigid as a conventional ski boot.
Additionally, US patent application US2016/192729A1 discloses a ski boot system which includes a shell and a liner. The shell is made up of two side portions, that is, a left side portion and a right side portion, which are hinged together at a rear portion or at a sole portion by a hinge. Therefore, the shell can be opened at the hinge as an axis to take the liner out. Additionally, there is a locking clasp on the shell to keep the shell in a closed position.
However, there are some problems with these ski boots. In the boots from DAHU SPORTS, even though it is easy to open the forward and rearward portions of the shell by hands, it is hard to take the liner out of the shell, especially when the skier is wearing cumbersome ski gloves. In particular, it is hard to handle the locking claps back and forth since there is no space between the forward and rearward portions of the shell for keeping the entire stability and thus they form tight fitting dimensions. Therefore the liner is hard to put into or get out of the shell.
And in the ski boots disclosed by US patent application US2016/192729A1, in case that the hinge is installed at the rear portion of the shell, the strength of the entire boot is weakened to the extent that the controllability is reduced. And in case that the hinge is installed at the sole, it is hard to open it in operation. In particular, the hinge portion has to project inwardly so as to get separated when the ski is tearing from the front portion of the boot, therefore it is hard to separate, resulting in the difficulty in putting the liner into the shell or getting it out therefrom. More importantly, when the left and right side portions are to be closed, the liner must be caught therebetween so that they cannot be closed. In same way, when the hinge is installed on the sole, in addition to the above problem, the left and right side portions can hardly be well closed due to the support of the hinge. Hence this solution is not practical. Therefore, this solution has not been commercialized since it came out during 1970s.
In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 4,633,599 discloses a ski boot, the rear upper of which can be opened rearward. Then the rear upper can be pressed against the leg of the skier by means of an elastic cable. One end of the elastic cable is fixed onto the rear upper and the other end is fixed onto locking means. The locking means have a form of knob and can be rotated manually so as to adjust the tension applied to the elastic cable. However, the locking means can only apply a force onto the elastic cable which is too small to securely hold the pivotal rear upper in a proper position. Furthermore, due to the installation position and the structure of the knob, it is hard to increase the locking force of the locking means by way of increasing the diameter of the knob.
There are still some technical solutions for tensioning the belts in the prior art. For example, Chinese Utility Model CN201015448Y discloses a belt reel which is composed of a cylinder seat, a winding shaft, a limiting cylinder and a driving shaft. The belt is wound around the winding shaft and can be driven by the driving shaft. The driving shaft has a ratchet wheel so as to engage with the ratchet. And the driving shaft can be pulled axially so as to slide between the position in which it engages with the teeth and the position in which it disengages from them. And the driving shaft can be rotated by the controlling cylinder so as to wind or unwind the belt. Such technical solutions utilizing knobs are applicable on normal shoes. However, just as mentioned before, since they cannot provide large tension to the belts, they cannot be applied on the ski boots which require large tension or even regular ski boots; moreover they cannot be applied on the ski boots with a shell covering a liner. That is because the locking required by the ski boots is different from that of normal shoes which only needs to overcome the elastic space of the socks or fillers inside the shoes. For ski boots with separated liner and shell, it is more critical that it should not only overcome the need of multidirectional forces of the boot, especially when there is high rigidity and when the sole and the shell are overlapped; it should also overcome locating pins at multiple positions, friction and support of various springs; furthermore, it should be easy to lock so that there is no space and the locking is secure.
In addition, since skiing is a kind of dangerous sports, especially during alpine skiing or off-ski track skiing, the skier can be in danger due to his own fault or the change of outside conditions. And in some extreme situations, the skier may lose unconsciousness. If the distress signal is failed to send out and rescue is not available in time, there is a risk of huge blood loss or freezing to death of the skier. However, due to the strict natural conditions of the ski park, search and rescue operation is hard.
Therefore, there is a need to improve the ski boots.